


white nights, red blood, a gift of gold

by Skowronek



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Dogs, Fantasy, Injury, LLYBB Bing, M/M, Magician!Yuuri, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skowronek/pseuds/Skowronek
Summary: Here is one thing Viktor removed out of the equation:Everyone knew it was dangerous to walk alone at midsummer night. This is when the nights were white, the city was bustling, magic simmered under Yuuri Katsuki’s fingertips and crime rates would always go up, always.





	white nights, red blood, a gift of gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/gifts).



> For D., my son, my smol, my sworn enemy

 

 

 

Everyone knew it was best to strike a deal at midsummer night.

This is when the nights were white, the city was bustling, and magic simmered under Yuuri Katsuki’s fingertips.

(“I’m not a magician” Yuuri would always say, but really, you don’t run a wandering shop that comes and goes without a tiny bit of magic in your blood. “I’m a scientist”, Yuuri would always say, and all Viktor could do was smile and blink, because really, sometimes you let wizards keep their secrets – and sometimes, you itch to discover them, one by one. Viktor was not patient).

It’s a short walk to Yuuri’s shop, he thought.

Thinking being the problem, actually; Viktor never really knew where to find Yuuri. Yuuri came and went and disappeared on Viktor without even a trace of magic in the air, and he always took a bit more of Viktor’s heart with him, and left a bit more of a heartbreak.

But it was a white night; it was the midsummer. Viktor walked onto a bridge on the Moyka river, the Blue Bridge, the widest bridge in the world, and he breathed in the cool air of St. Petersburg that tasted of excitement, and watched the night colour the sky into unusual hues. Yuuri was there, out there, out in the night – and Viktor was going to reach him.

He was going to reach out to him, too, he smiled to himself, looking at what he was carrying in his arms.

“And what do we have here?”

(Here is one thing Viktor removed out of the equation:

Everyone knew it was dangerous to walk alone at midsummer night. This is when the nights were white, the city was bustling, magic simmered under Yuuri Katsuki’s fingertips and crime rates would always go up, always).

“Nothing” Viktor said. This is what you say to men like this, men who think they can stop you from crossing bridges until you pay the toll, men who may not be really men – Viktor didnn’t know and didn’t care. He just wanted to cross the damn bridge. It was not one of the huge drawbridges that got raised for midsummer celebrations tonight. 

He had hoped to avoid the trouble.

(He wondered whether Yuuri would still like him if he showed up with a black eye and without a gift.

This moment of inattention might well have been when the trouble really started).

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” the man said. Of course he did. Why bother coming up with an imaginative answer if a plain one works perfectly well? Viktor might not have a single spark of magic in his fingers, but he knew his city, and he knew how such stories go.

It was not nothing. It was a gift; and it was heavy, heavier than it looked. Viktor thought he might hit the man with it and run; only then Yuuri would not get the gift, so this is not an option.

So he did the only other thing he could think of: he ran.

(It’s not as easy as it sounds).

Viktor knew this route; he jogged there every other day, he skated on the river in winter when the ice was white and the frost painted flowers on Viktor’s windows, he was a child of this city, born and bred here, and it was all for nothing. He now moved past the Mariinsky Palace and saw none of its beauty.

(It’s as simple like that: the gift is heavy.)

Viktor ran and ran and even crossed the bridge and the night was still pale and bright around him, and no one paid attention to him and the man because stranger things had happened in St. Petersburg, and stranger still at midsummer.

(The gift is heavy in his arms.)

The man reached him when the roads crossed. Viktor was surprised he’d run this long; the man was tall and fast and might not be human. His eyes – Viktor now saw clearly – were like amber, glowing beer-gold and too bright, and Viktor was afraid.

This is what Viktor saw: a city of pale shadows that melted night into day, peace into violence, that spread and entwined until they led Viktor there, to the crossroads just past the palace.

This is what Viktor thought: it was weird to stand in the light like this, out in the open, when crime had its reign in back alleys and dark corners. It was weird, too, that no one really minded.

This is what Viktor heard:

“You can just hand it to me and walk away,” the man said. He had a golden tooth in place of his right canine and Viktor knew the man simply was too fond of gold. He grasped the gift tighter. “I don’t like spilling blood.”

Viktor doubted it.

“Get your own gold,” he said, and even to his ears it sounded weak.

Maybe the man said something back, something idiotic like “I’d rather get yours,” or maybe he broke into a long speech because he was an old-fashioned villain. Viktor didn’t care.

(This is not the surprise he intended for Yuuri. Not at all. But Yuuri did enjoy a little excitement. If Viktor showed up on his doorstep with a criminal on his heels, maybe Yuuri would find some weird pleasure in blasting the hooligan out and inviting Viktor in, and whisking them away to safety and then Viktor would finally kiss him senseless.

That is, if he reached Yuuri first.

It wasn’t not that far.)

He started with a jolt and ran and ran and the gift weighted him down more than it should. He could hear the man – he was everywhere, panting and so close. Viktor would fight, perhaps – but he was not a fighter, and he had a gift to protect.

So he ran.

And then he didn’t.

The man grabbed him by his hair and pushed back until Viktor’s side slammed painfully into a wall. Viktor lost his footing like he never had on the ice, and when his head hit the wall, it was with a thud that made his vision go black and then starry, and wasn’t it strange that there were stars he could see now though the sky was so bright at night.

(It’s too bright for this kind of violence.)

His hands dropped. The gift began to fall, heavy, and somehow the man caught it before it hit the ground. Figures, Viktor thought, too pained to move, he knew it was expensive.

(It was too expensive for the man to ever discover. But Viktor knew. He was going to remember this, and regret, and was going to have to find a better gift for Yuuri, and he knew: this would be impossible.)

“See you around,” the man then said. Viktor still couldn’t see him – the world was so dark now and it was so strange – but he felt him shuffle and he knew the gift would disappear with him, forever.

(“See you around,” really. Viktor hit his head and still knew it was a cliché.)

The shuffle grew into a rumble. Maybe he hit his head really hard.

“I leave Russia for six months and somehow you manage to get yourself in trouble.”

Viktor opened his eyes. The world slipped from under his feet and he slid down the wall, rough. The man was still there, standing still, his mouth agape, the gift in his arms, losing nothing of its gold shine.

And Yuuri was there now, too, chubbier than Viktor remembered him, and with a glint in his dark eyes that Viktor didn’t remember at all. His fingers fidgeted in a way Viktor knew: this was what Yuuri looked like when he was about to cast a spell.

(“I’m not a magician, Viktor, honestly.”)

“You thought you could do, what?” Yuuri asked. Viktor didn’t know whether he was genuinely confused. “Steal from him in broad daylight?”

The man looked paralysed. Viktor was not sure – and it was hard to suspect –but it might be Yuuri’s doing.

“You’re going to put this thing carefully on the ground and walk away.” Yuuri now said. “And you’re going to do it now. See that door over there? The one that was not here two minutes ago? A snap of my fingers and I moved an entire building in here.”

(Viktor knew it wasn’t as easy as Yuuri made it sound. There was a lot of maths involved. A snap of fingers was just for the aesthetics, or so Yuuri claimed.)

“Now imagine,” Yuuri said, and his voice changed again, “how easy it is for me to move a person like that. Where would you like to go? Siberia? Kamchatka? I’m very fond of Khaborovsk Krai myself. And all of them are so far away from here.”

 

* * *

Everyone knew it was best to strike a deal at midsummer night.

Yuuri fussed over Viktor in the shop, applying various medications to Viktor’s wound that he insisted were not potions. Viktor was feeling a bit guilty that he had left a dark trail of blood on Yuuri’s carpet.

The gift was on the counter, waiting. Viktor didn’t let Yuuri touch it yet.

“I hope you don’t have concussion,” Yuuri said now, “why would you scare me like that? And showing off golden sculptures out in the street, really. How safe is that? You know people are violent at midsummer. All emotions intensify.”

“How did you know where to find me?” Viktor just asked. Yuuri didn’t really want to hear his answers, Viktor thought. He just worried, more than usual, and he was a worrier on his best days.

“I didn’t,” Yuuri answered. “And I’m mad at you. I just – I just moved the shop because it was closer to the Mariinsky Palace, and I know how you like jogging there sometimes.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor then said. Yuuri always said such things to him, he did such things to him, as if they were the most common things in the world. He always gave Viktor such magic. “Wait here. I’ve got something for you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Yuuri replied, amused now. “It’s my shop, you know.”

Viktor stood up, glancing at the chair – he didn’t get it bloody, at least – and carefully walked to the counter, picking the gold sculpture up.

(Everyone knew it was best to strike a deal at midsummer night. Viktor would give Yuuri his gift and his heart. Yuuri would give Viktor - life, perhaps. No - Viktor was sure of that.)

“You know, my hands,” Yuuri began to say. “You know I turn gold into – well. Other things.”

Viktor knew. He had put his gold medal on Yuuri once, the only one made of real gold, and it turned into dust and ashes, and Viktor turned into a lovesick mess.

“I know,” he said. “You’re a magician, after all.”

“I’m – really not,” Yuuri said. “It’s just science. I’m just figuring out some bits.”

(This is what Viktor thought: that Yuuri had implied other things back in the street when the man looked so stunned that it couldn’t be natural, not even at midsummer night. He would never say that to Yuuri, though. He knew how Yuuri was.)

“You can figure out this one,” he said instead. “I know it won’t be gold anymore when you touch it. I count on it.”

There was a wonder in Yuuri’s eyes almost exactly like the one Viktor had seen when Yuuri had learnt about white nights, three years ago. He reached out both of his hands and Viktor shifted, placing the gift in his outstretched arms.

(It was done soundlessly, without smoke. True magic needs no flashes. But there was a whimper.)

“It’s – is it? for real?”

“For you.” Viktor said. The last traces of gold where gone; where the sculpture had been still, there now moved a puppy, snuggling into the nook of Yuuri’s elbow with a soft gasp, fast asleep. “I wanted to surprise you – and ask you out for a date, perhaps. It didn’t turn out as well as I hoped.”

Yuuri looked at him and then at the puppy, and then out, into the streets of St. Petersburg.

“Let’s go, Viktor,” he finally said. “I hear the night is beautiful today.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a result of a bing within the Live and Love YOI Bang, and an effect of a collab with the wonderful [dyeingdoll](https://dyeingdoll.tumblr.com/), who made this lovely piece of art for it!  
> Lots of the plot is a result of some discord brainstorming between dyeingdoll, [Shacha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai) and me; even more is a result of exchanging random plot ideas with Voxofthevoid. <3 
> 
> I'm chilling on [tumblr](http://kaja-skowronek.tumblr.com) here, if you wanna scream.


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